April 12 -The University of Colorado at Denver wants the "mother of multimedia" as its next business school dean.

Sueann Ambron, an entrepreneur and former executive for several high-tech corporations, will begin the job this summer if approved by the CU board of regents April 20.

Ambron has a long list of high-tech credits, but particularly noteworthy was her work with Apple Computer Inc.'s Multimedia Lab in the late 1980s.

She founded the lab and came up with the word "multimedia" to describe its work. The name stuck.

"We were trying to figure out what to call the stuff we were working with,"
Ambron said. The word "hypermedia"
was proposed, but Ambron didn't like it. "- "Multimedia' was much more palatable to the education community." In a 1994 article, Wired magazine dubbed Ambron "The Mother of Multimedia," though Ambron, 55, isn't particularly fond of the title.

Ambron left Apple in 1992 for Viacom/Paramount, where she was executive vice president for interactive media, running the company's Media Kitchen in San Francisco. She directed multimedia and online divisions of US West in Denver and Motorola Inc. in Schaumburg, Ill., until 1998, when she founded her own company, Avulet Inc. She left the helm of the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet startup in January to be with her husband, who had remained in Denver.

"Some people might find it hard to believe, but I left for love," she said.

Despite her executive credentials, which CU-Denver officials said were a big factor in choosing her, Ambron knows academia. She was a professor of educational psychology for Stanford University from 1973 to 1982.

"I'm at the stage in my career where I have 25 years of experience in high tech," she said. "I feel it's time to give back to the community." Ambron's selection has not been without controversy. Some faculty members objected to the hiring process, saying the chancellor's office favored Ambron over J.C. Bosch, who has served as interim dean since Yash Gupta left last year.

But CU Regent Norwood Robb said that is unlikely to derail the regents' acceptance of Ambron.

"We usually let the chancellors handle these things," he said.

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